Hidden Treasure

Twenty years ago, my mom sold her two-story house and moved with my teenaged brother into a brand-new, much smaller apartment. It was an opportunity, the first one, for her to purposefully choose the color schemes and decoration of the new place. My mother has an artist’s soul, so the look had a lot of class--pastels and natural materials. One of the pieces she purchased would become very familiar to me over the years. A hinged, wicker chest, tinted softly in spring hues, ended up mine when she left the apartment and returned to more spacious accommodations. It has been with me ever since, getting an updated coat of color with each move. It currently serves as toy chest in the living room, so it is a shiny black, but never seemed particularly special. Until Scarlett heard about treasure chests. The other day she was feeling especially pretend-y and whimsical, so everything took on a bit of magic--most notably the ordinary wicker chest that had now become a “treasure.” There were no limits to what might be in the treasure, and she was so convincing that I had to peek a couple of times just to make sure it was still the same old chest I’d always known. Which it was…to me. For Scarlett, anything was possible. In “Dora’s Treasure Hunt” from Dora’s Storytime Collection, the explorer gang looks for a key to open the treasure chest. In our living room, all you have to do is lift the lid.

http://www.amazon.com/Doras-Storytime-Collection-Dora-Explorer/dp/0689866232

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1656354/

Español Made Easy

Scarlett can count to ten. In Spanish. And we didn’t teach her. Dora did. We certainly recognize the importance of multiple communication paths around here--Scarlett hears different versions of words all the time and we weren’t surprised when she readily picked up sign language as an infant--but it caught me off guard when she busted from uno to diez without any formal coaching from us. Miss Explorer and her crew did a bang-up job of doing their job--the kid knows English…and Spanish, too. How ‘bout you? So, keeping with this new-found ability, I’ve been trying to give her more Spanish vocabulary, at least as much as I know from growing up in California. And it seems to be working. When I told her that a little girl at dance class had a “mariposa” barrette in her hair, I heard Scarlett behind me in the carseat repeating it to herself for storage and retrieval. Then she started whispering, “abra open, cierra closed.” I guess she figured she would pull out all the stops since she was on a roll. It’s pretty fascinating to watch how effortless the process is when it is allowed to progress naturally stress-free. And I guess it makes sense--to small people, every word sounds like a foreign language at first. Susan Middleton Elya decided to make basic Spanish vocabulary fun to learn in her engaging rhyming book Say Hola To Spanish. It’s such a good time, we read it three times. Or should I say tres veces?


http://www.amazon.com/Hola-Spanish-Susan-Middleton-Elya/dp/1880000644

http://www.susanelya.com/files/home.htm

Girl Power

When Keilana was a preschooler I had my first exposure to the Power Rangers. Since we did not have cable, the same video got played incessantly. At first, the frenetic action and obnoxious characters drove me nuts. And that Rita voice? Unbearable. But Keilana was hooked and when Keilana decided/decides she is going to fixate on something, the smart thing is just to leave her to her own devices. Surprisingly, the Power Rangers began to grow on me and I liked that the girl Rangers kicked as much hiney as the boys, wearing the same costume with sensible shoes for fighting evil rather than some cleavage-bearing, stiletto heels get-up. I discovered this was the case, at least in the early imported episodes, because the original Japanese version had all male Rangers (yes, even the pink and yellow ones) so the action sequences preserved to lower costs were all performed by men, but that didn’t matter to me in the long run. I wanted Keilana to feel empowered and she got the Power Rangers go-ahead. Skirts were added when the show started making money here, but the shoes were still flat, the goods still covered and the action still equal, so the Power Rangers were mother-approved. Scarlett is far behind the Power Rangers craze, but she has Dora the Explorer. I like Dora--she’s plucky, persistent, and bi-lingual. In Emily Sollinger’s Crystal Kingdom Adventures, Dora brings color back to the realm while wearing shorts and tennies. We’ve come a long way, baby!

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Crystal-Kingdom-Adventures/Victoria-Miller/Dora-The-Explorer/9781416984986

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Emily-Sollinger/22760555

No Swiping!

Have you read her a book today? That question gets asked every day now. I like the mindfulness of it. I like the commitment of it. Knowing you should read to your kids daily takes on a different level of import when you’ve publicly guaranteed you will. And so we read--books we buy, books we borrow, old books, new books, some classics, and some newfangled favorites. Whatever catches our interest. Since Scarlett is two generations behind me and one behind her “Transformers-” and “Thundercats“-loving dad, we aren’t always in the know about what’s cool in the small people scene. Every five years or so, the pantheon of characters held in high esteem by the preschool set undergoes transition. Oh sure, some favorites have stood the test of time, but for the most part the popularity shelf-life of any given character isn’t very long. What was all the rage a year or two ago will soon fade into the background. And the measure of how in-the-know a grownup is rests with their familiarity with the current hot properties. Having a ten year gap between my last two girls, I’m just now being fully introduced to the world of Dora the Explorer and her friends. Until now, Addison was too old and Scarlett was too young (well, for anything but that fuzzy, red muppet) to keep me up on Dora, Diego, Backpack, and Swiper. But now, after reading Phoebe Beinstein’s Baby Animals featuring Dora and crew, we’re hip. No hay problema. Adios!

http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Animals-Explorer-Phoebe-Beinstein/dp/0689850174

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=126075